The force of habit.

Last year my local grocery store of choice remodeled.

If you're the main grocery shopper in your household, which I am, you may shop the sales to some extent but you usually end up going to one store in particular out of preference, and this was mine. I knew where everything was in the store, so I could do my shopping quickly and efficiently. I knew that the quality of meat and produce was reliable, and that the everyday prices were fair, and that they kept it reasonably clean, and that it was on the way home from most of the other places I tend to go. I knew most of the clerks and made small talk with them as I checked out.

When construction began, I complained about it to friends and family in a slightly grumpy manner--the store was too big, things weren't where I expected them to be, blah blah blah. Mainly, of course, I resented having to relearn the comfortable shopping experience. Gatorade was now by the soda instead of by the juice, what's up with that? Why do the frozen meat products come before the regular meats? Not being able to shave off those few precious minutes from my shopping time was terrible.

And you know, for a while I did start going to the other grocery store in town. (It's a small town, there are only two.) But the prices weren't any better, and the selection was worse, and I certainly didn't know my way around that place either.

So, eventually, I went back to that grocery store. I still don't like it as well as I used to. And now I go to other grocery stores as well. But I did return.

And you know what? Months after the Newsarama site did its remodel? After I decided to look around the web to see whether there was anyplace I preferred? I still go there every day. I don't stay there as long, and I go other places as well, but I do go.